click tracks and drums
continuing my sparsical uploading of music from my youth, figured i’d do a contrast deal showing how bad click tracks can be, and one way to get around them.
three songs follow. the first is me at “the recording workshop” in ohio, in 1983 i think. we were allowed to book a session to do our own thing, with other students as engineers. i didn’t have anything in mind, so i asked my cabin mates if they had any ideas. one guy related a story of how he’d gotten mugged or something, so — far as i can remember — we all got together and wrote some stupid lyrics as an excuse for me to put music to it. something like that. my memory’s shot.
anyway, i wrote the music then played everything but the high backing vocal (performed by a guy i should’ve asked to do the lead, since mine sucked) and a crowd shout thing. not bad for a rush joke job from students, but what really sticks out is the click track. all my fault, of course.
click tracks have been killing music for decades. somebody fires up a machine, feeds it into the drummer’s headphones, then he plays along trying to not sound robotic. in this case (dark ages) i used a metronome with a mic on it in vocal booth. while click tracks can prevent worse disasters (a drummer wobbling all over the place), it also tends to remove natural tempo variation, giving a rushed feel as the drummer pushes himself in places he shouldn’t, or scrambles to get back on time after a drag. you can’t slip it easily without dropping whole beats. click tracks also contribute to ear fatigue, since they’re often blasted into the drummer’s head to be heard over the drums. ladies and gentleman, a song suffering from click track (and other problems). BTW, if you listen closely you can hear the click bleed through my headphones into the overhead drum mics:
good drummers don’t need clicks, and i have done drums as the first track without one before (see here), but tempo’s such a crucial, delicate thing, it’s nice to have a benchmark when laying down tracks that would be a pain in the ass to redo if the tempo was off.
the next two songs use my ideal click track solution (assuming only the drummer needs a click). they’re demo tracks (1990 or ’91?) from a band called “Undertow“. undertow went through drummers about as rapidly as spinal tap, and called me asking if i knew any drummers who could sit in for a demo session. i told the guitarist i was a pretty good drummer when required, and i’d like to give it a shot. playing drums and engineering is a pain in the ass, so considering how stale i was on the kit, i knew i’d need some sort of ballpark tempo reference. decided to use my roland TR-707 drum machine, but without listening to a sound. here’s how, and i recommend the technique to all drummers who need a little tempo guidance but don’t want the usual disaster of fighting a click track:
the TR-707 has 16 lights, each representing a 16th note. for each measure of 4/4, the lights sequence left to right in time with the beat. perfect! i simply set the machine up where i could see it without straining, then got the tempo from the lights. the superiority of the method’s in the flexibility. real music usually requires that you vary the tempo here and there, or leave it entirely. because of the 16 lights (instead of just one), i could pause, rush, or drag, and when i wanted to see how i was in relation to the reference, i simply marked the rough position in the light sequence on the front panel. within one measure it told me if i was ahead or behind of the target, then if i wanted i could nudge back on course without rushing or hearing flam distraction in my phones. once back on, i used the new “one” position (anywhere from 1–16) as the reference. allows continual slip if desired, with no fight or ear conflict. it let me do stuff like slack the vocal break in this tune (BTW, these were ripped from a grungy mass-produced cassette; my studio didn’t sound quite this bad):
So Nervosa ‘Bout Everything (4 MB .MP3)
second tune, same routine:
since i barely ever played drums, that session wrecked my fingers, even with continual application of duct tape. IMO, there’s no way to play strong rock drums except hard. loose, sure, but gotta be hard, slammin’ hits when the time’s right. i recently heard a guy describing the natural power long-time boxers bring to their punches; i think the same applies to drums. i’m a skinny boy with little arm power, but could sling a stick with the best of ‘em. from what i saw in my studio, seemed that arm strength often worked against drummers; they’d stiffen and couldn’t hit the drums (notably the snare) properly.
don’t have permission to post those, but since it’s been so long and i can’t track down any of the guys, fuck it. maybe if i include their names, one or two’ll ego-surf on over here and ask for an address for service of the complaint/summons. be good to hear from them, lawsuit details aside.
alan brock (guitar, etc.), sanjay kaul (vocal, etc.), chris rusin (keyboard, etc.), trent tooley (bass, etc.)